The buying and selling of products and services has resulted in a vast array of buying schemes which are used to vary the price at which such products are sold. A common buying scheme, which businesses encounter regularly, is known as volume buying. According to this buying scheme, sellers set a fixed unit price for their products based on the volume of units that a buyer is willing to purchase. Buyers desiring to purchase products from the seller are each required to pay the same fixed price depending on the volume of units the buyer is purchasing. If a seller finds that the demand for a given product is greater or less than expected, the seller may later adjust the fixed price per unit of the product to account for such findings. Although the fixed price per unit system provides a simple way for a seller to conduct business with multiple buyers, one drawback of this buying scheme is that it fails to provide buyers with a choice between a variety of different buying criteria that may be just as important as or more important to the buyer than price.
For example, a buyer that is in need of goods, such as raw materials to make products for an expedited order may be willing to pay a higher price for a faster delivery time. Another buyer may be concerned with the quality of the goods they are purchasing, such that the buyer would pay a higher price for goods having a minimum number of defects. Yet another buyer may be concerned with the warranty time allotted for the goods they are purchasing, and may want the warranty of the goods that they are purchasing to match or exceed the warranty the buyers are offering their own customers.
Yet another buying scheme which has been advanced in recent years is buyer-driven bidding. According to this buying scheme, a single buyer desiring to obtain a product communicates a price at which the buyer is willing to purchase the product to multiple sellers. Each of the sellers is provided an opportunity to review the buyer's price. A sale is complete when one of the sellers agrees to sell the product to the buyer at the price suggested by the buyer. While the buyer-driven bidding scheme provides advantages for certain types of transactions when, for example, sellers may be willing to sell products at lower than normal prices, the uncertainties involved with whether a buyer's offer will be accepted is often problematic for high volume commercial transactions in which the reliability that a transaction will be complete is of paramount importance. Another problem with the present buying schemes is that the buyers have no control in determining the criteria of the product or services that they may receive, while the seller has no control of the type of purchase that the buyer=s request.